The Beauty of Destruction

by Gavin G. Smith

  ‘You need to lose the submachine gun and pick something that complements—’ he started.

  ‘My eyes?’ Beth asked. Du Bois had to suppress irritation but there was no humour in her words, she just looked sad.

  ‘You’ve seen the world,’ he said softly.

  ‘I know. Look, I don’t have your experience but I have the knowledge you downloaded into me. I know what I’m doing. Or something in my head does, anyway.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll be back in a little while,’ he told her and made for the armoured door. Du Bois felt her eyes on his back as he left the gunroom.

  It had been a dungeon once, even deeper than his converted cellar. It was a partially excavated cavern. The bars had been removed long ago. Crystal growths covered the wall, there were bookshelves everywhere, a large TV and several other monitors, a top-of-the-line stereo with a collection of CDs and vinyl, comfortable chairs and sofas. It was half nest and half recreation room. He could smell the familiar musky scent of animal in the air. One of the stripped-out adjoining cells was set up as a gym and training area, but it had been a long time since du Bois had learned any new fighting skills in there.

  He shuffled out of the kitchen area. Du Bois was thankful he wasn’t holding anything to eat. He looked stooped and old but du Bois was half convinced that was because he had decided to age.

  ‘I thought you might be asleep,’ du Bois said. The hissing noise was laughter.

  ‘Who could sleep?’ The humanoid creature had an arrow-shaped, ophidian head, reptilian eyes and fading, peeling scales. He was wearing a heavy coat and layers of jumpers, a hood was pulled up over his head, he wore a tightly wrapped scarf and even his serpentine tail was covered by a knitted tail warmer. All this despite how high the heating was cranked up.

  ‘This is it, isn’t it?’ du Bois said. The serpent just peered at him, his tongue flicking out. One of his eyes looked a little milky. The creature lay down on one of the sofas and scrabbled around on a cluttered side table until he found a pair of thickly lensed pince-nez. Du Bois sat down in one of the armchairs opposite the serpent creature.

  ‘A shame they attacked the internet, I thought. I had just found a number of rather engaging online games.’

  ‘How many thousands of years have you been bored?’ du Bois asked, laughing.

  ‘I enjoy knowledge. I genuinely wonder which was the greatest invention, the printing press or the internet. I suppose it could be argued one was the progression of the other. I do like the smell of an old book, though, that said: funny cat pictures. Still, it would have been nice to have walked under the sun again. The real sun, not the pale distant thing that very occasionally visits these shores.’

  ‘I think you could walk out there now. I don’t think it matters.’

  The serpent looked down and slowly shook his pointed head, his tongue flicking out again.

  ‘I don’t think I could. I think I have become … institutionalised.’ He looked up again. ‘I’m too afraid of the madness. I am too afraid to die. Fear was ever my real prison.’

  ‘Justified fear,’ du Bois said.

  The serpent looked away again. ‘Perhaps, but it is no way to live,’ he said quietly. The silence stretched out. Du Bois began to feel uncomfortable. ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’ the serpent finally said.

  ‘It seems unlikely,’ du Bois admitted. It was strange how much he was going to miss this inhuman creature, so much a part of his life for so long. In some ways a better father to him and Alexia than his real father had been. ‘There’s enough food and fuel—’ he started but the serpent held up a scaled claw.

  ‘Alexia?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Du Bois knew the creature well enough to recognise the body language. The serpent was dealing with a deep sadness. Du Bois wondered how someone who had lost so much did not become inured to loss.

  ‘There’s someone else in the house,’ the serpent said. ‘It’s not Grace, is it?’

  Du Bois frowned. ‘You are the second person to mention that name to me.’

  The serpent stared at him. This time du Bois saw the anger.

  ‘That bastard!’ the serpent spat.

  ‘He’s removed someone from my memory, hasn’t he?’ du Bois said, and sagged. It was hard to miss someone you couldn’t even remember.

  ‘You worked with her for over a hundred years. I think, in many ways, you were like a father to her. He is a cruel man. I … think I once knew more. Perhaps you should have left when my daughter did. Your vicious little cult used her as a brood mare, you know?’

  Du Bois tried not to show any reaction but he could feel the serpent’s eyes boring into him.

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ Du Bois looked up but didn’t say anything. He knew it was written all over his face. ‘Would you leave me?’ It was all but a hiss, the equivalent of a human voice filled with emotion, an old man asking for mercy in the absence of his daughter’s killer.

  Du Bois was surprised to feel the sensation of his eyes watering, though his augmented physiology would not quite let it happen. He stood up and made for the staircase.

  ‘You could have treated me differently. I think he wanted you to.’

  Du Bois stopped his foot on the bottom stair. ‘You weren’t a prisoner as far as I was concerned. We were protecting you.’ He started up the stairs and then stopped. ‘Is there hope?’

  ‘Yes, ’ the serpent replied. Du Bois turned to look at the reclining creature. ‘Find the Ubh Blaosc,’ the serpent said simply. Du Bois frowned and then continued up the stairs.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Beth asked when he walked into the gunroom. Du Bois nodded brusquely and then looked at her choices. She had picked a Mark 48 Mod 0 light machine gun. Chambered for the same 7.62mm round as his carbine and the Purdey. She had replaced the solid stock with a collapsible one and added a foregrip to the picatinny rail, and a holographic sight. She had also filled a number of the clip-on ammunition pouches with hundred round belts for the weapon.

  Next to the Mark 48 was a Benelli M4 NFA with a collapsible stock. The shotgun was a shorter barrelled version of the M1014 shotgun she had already been using but with a five round tubular magazine instead of seven. She’d put the weapon onto a nylon back sheath that she could attach to a pack or webbing.

  For a sidearm she had picked a Colt OHWS. The .45 calibre pistol was a failed competitor to become the handgun of choice for the US special forces. Its nylon holster held a suppressor. The rail under the barrel had a laser aiming module attached to it that she probably wouldn’t need. All in all she had chosen well. Between them they had a good mix of ranged, support and close-in weapons, most of which used interchangeable ammunition. Du Bois took down two hardened plastic boxes of ammunition. One was 7.62mm, the other .45 calibre. He took one of the magazines for her .45, emptied it, and went to start loading it with rounds from the box. Beth stopped him.

  ‘I’ll load my own,’ she said. Again du Bois was impressed.

  ‘These are hollow points. Their tips have been filled—’

  ‘With nanites,’ Beth said. ‘They’re for killing people like us?’

  ‘Don’t load them in your weapon unless you know it’s someone you can’t kill with normal ordnance. Even then, we tend to put them down with a lot of normal rounds, close, and deliver a coup de grace with the sidearm. The nanite bullets kill but they are slow, and you want your target’s ability to heal overcome by conventional means. Also, we don’t have a lot of these. We can sort of make our own but they will not be as effective. You need to use them as sparingly as possible.’

  Beth put the magazine down and backed away from the workbench, shaking her head and laughing.

  ‘What?’ du Bois demanded.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said. Du Bois felt something snap inside him. Suddenly he was around the workbench and had grabbed Beth by the arms.

  ‘Nobody cares you don’t like guns, nobody cares that you don’t want to kill despite the knives you carry, nobody cares that your f
ather’s dead, your sister’s gone, nobody even cares that the whole world’s fucked! They don’t care because everybody is mad and wants to kill you! You’ll be doing them a favour when you pull the trigger. But if you’re coming with me then you need to do the same as the rest of us – wish you still got the shakes after the fact, and down a bottle of whisky when thinking about it gets too much!’

  ‘Get your fucking hands off me!’ Beth shouted and pushed him away, hard, surprising him. He banged into the workbench. He tried to master his temper. Control the instinct to counter attack.

  ‘Get your head in this, because this is going to be like Wonderland to the DAYP,’ du Bois said, calming down. He could see the anger in her eyes, one hand in her leather jacket, he assumed on the hilt of her bayonet. She was ready to go for him with a blade.

  ‘That’s all that’s keeping you going, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s enough for now,’ he said, more quietly now. The Ubh Blaosc seemed nothing but a distant myth. He shouldn’t have asked the question. He didn’t want to let hope in. ‘You could have gone to the moors, or you can still stay here.’ He’d probably like that, du Bois thought, glancing down. ‘But I can’t have you with me if there’s doubt, or hesitation.’ He looked up at her. Finally she nodded.

  They had put together their kit. As much ammunition as they could realistically carry. It was all secured in webbing worn over their jackets. They had bled on their clothes, even on their underwear, not just to provide the material with armoured properties but to make it self-cleaning so they wouldn’t have to carry extra clothes. Their packs mostly contained food in the form of concentrated calorific energy bars developed by the Circle, medical equipment in the form of matter-replacing drips, and more ammunition. On their backs, under their packs, they both wore military hydration bladders that contained a calorific energy-replacing liquid. They had also taken a mixture of grenades, which again were held in pouches on their webbing. Everything was secured, or taped in place to make as little noise as possible. Beth had also found a woolly watch hat to wear.

  Then it had gone wrong the moment they had taken off.

  As they rose out of the courtyard in the pouring rain, du Bois fighting the cross wind as soon as they cleared the walls and narrowly missing the east tower of the keep, all the locks engaged on the cockpit. The stick stopped responding and the autopilot took over. They rose quickly, getting buffeted through the storm. Realising something was wrong, Beth drew her .45.

  ‘That’ll just have a bullet bouncing around in here,’ du Bois told her. The autopilot took them into the lightning-illuminated clouds. It showed them the inside of the storm.

  ‘One of the nano-tipped rounds could eat their way out,’ Beth suggested.

  ‘I’ve a better idea.’ Du Bois reached for the punch blade he wore disguised as a belt buckle. He had replaced the one he had used in Portsmouth at the castle. The blade could disintegrate into nanites designed to attack – effectively eat – their target. If he used it now it was unlikely he would get a replacement. As he prepared to punch it into the modified Perspex, the plane cleared the cloud cover. Above them the stars still seemed peaceful. Du Bois checked the altimeter.

  ‘We would never survive a fall from here,’ he told Beth. He heard her slump against her seat.

  ‘Can we eject?’ The tone of her voice suggested that she already knew the answer to this, and so did he. He tried anyway but his neuralware was completely locked out of the system.

  ‘Your people?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he told her. Somehow it seemed a little too sophisticated for the Circle. He wondered if Gideon had sold them out. He was worried about their altitude. If the Circle did decide they weren’t happy with his disobedience, all they’d have to do was look out the window of one of the orbitals and they would practically see them. There would be few other aircraft at this altitude in the air now.

  Cloud cover had been a blessing. It had prevented them from seeing what looked like entire countries on fire. Breaks in the cover had shown them smoking craters of glass where cities should have been. When they reached the Mediterranean they could see where it had overflowed, filling some of the craters. All the while du Bois felt the moments ticking away. He was struggling to come to terms with the scale of the destruction below. There had been a number of moments in his past when it had felt like the entire world was burning, but it had always been the changes in society, morals, which seemed to happen so quickly, that had bothered him the most.

  In the seat behind him he heard Beth trying to stifle a sob. Her world had ceased to exist.

  Du Bois wondered how much of what seemed to be cloud was actually ash.

  ‘Northern Iran?’ Beth asked. The modified Harrier had been losing altitude for some time now. ‘I guess it’s no more dangerous for us now than anywhere else.’

  ‘Less of a communications infrastructure, arguably safer,’ du Bois said.

  ‘Do you know who’s done this?’ Beth asked.

  ‘I think so.’ Du Bois was pretty sure it was over for him. Though he questioned their priorities at times like this. ‘I think you’ll be okay.’ The Harrier alerted them to the missile lock from a surface-to-air missile system. There was nothing they could do about it.

  ‘Mr du Bois, or do you prefer Sir Malcolm?’ the voice emanating from a speaker in the cockpit asked. It was deep, with an African accent, but even with the help of his neuralware he couldn’t pinpoint a region. He suspected that meant the speaker’s people no longer existed.

  ‘Mr du Bois is fine,’ du Bois said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Do we fight?’ Beth asked. He could hear the uncertainty in her voice.

  ‘I rather hope you won’t, Miss Luckwicke,’ the voice said. ‘We mean you no harm.’

  ‘And nothing says that like a missile lock,’ Beth pointed out.

  ‘You could probably still egress the vehicle if you so wished, we are hoping to discourage that. All we wish to do is talk.’

  ‘Then switch off the lock,’ du Bois suggested. The lock disappeared. It didn’t really matter. The point had been made. They were coming down in a dry, dusty, mountainous region. There seemed to be little sign of habitation in the area, although further away they could make out a few towns, smoke rising above them, the omnipresent pall of this new age.

  The Harrier was dropping vertically now, turning on a horizontal axis as it did, giving them a full view of the surrounding snow-capped mountains. Beneath them they could see the ruins of an old castle, scaffolding covering a number of its walls. On the narrow ridgeline that led to the castle they saw the SAM emplacement that had been tracking them. Among the ruins a number of people carrying next generation assault weapons waited.

  ‘I think I preferred your castle,’ Beth muttered.

  ‘The weather’s nicer here,’ du Bois pointed out. The sun was shining through a break in the clouds.

  ‘I hope you understand that any resistance at the moment just amounts to wasting resources and ultimately ends in the conversation we had hoped for anyway,’ the voice said as the Harrier’s wheels touched down.

  A gunman was waiting to help them out. His swarthy complexion suggested a Mediterranean or Middle Eastern origin. He had an old but serviceable looking tulwar strapped to his back.

  ‘Miss Luckwicke, Mr du Bois, if you would come with me, please.’ His English was accented but perfect. Other gunmen on the walls were either watching them or checking the surrounding area.

  They weren’t ordered to relinquish their weapons, and didn’t offer.

  The gunman led them into one of the partially destroyed buildings within the castle. It did not have a roof but offered a degree of privacy. Sitting on some exposed stone foundations were a pair of brass bottles with melted lead stoppers.

  ‘You must be joking,’ du Bois said. ‘I’m not opening my systems to you people.’

  He had been hunting them, and had in turn been hunted by them, for more than eight hundred years. The Circle ha
d been fighting them for over two thousand years.

  ‘This is much more of a security threat for us than it is for you,’ the gunman told du Bois.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Beth asked. ‘Who are these people? Terrorists?’

  The gunman turned to look at her, irritation flickering across his face.

  ‘Yes,’ du Bois said unequivocally.

  ‘Should we fight?’ Beth asked. ‘What will get us out of this the quickest?’

  He could see no other way out. The gunmen were probably as augmented as Beth and himself were, with the tech they needed to take them both down. It was an odd play, though. If they wanted him dead then there were easier ways to go about it. He knew they didn’t need him to betray the Circle, they had already done all the damage they needed to his possibly erstwhile employers. Part of it was resignation. It was only his need to destroy the DAYP that was keeping him going, really, and perhaps the faintest sense of hope. But there was curiosity as well. These people had been enemies of his since he had been mortal. He was intrigued to see how this played out. The gunman with the tulwar was watching him as he considered this, as was Beth.

  ‘Open the bottle,’ du Bois told the gunman finally.

  The man let his assault rifle drop on its sling and slid the tulwar from the scabbard on his back. The curved sword’s blade cut through the neck of the bottle. Du Bois heard screaming, his own, then he started to shake as if he was having a fit standing up. Then he collapsed as his neuralware was overwhelmed.

  It was easy to become jaded about the world when you had seen the technological wonders and terrors that he had seen. Du Bois was almost relieved that his sense of wonder could still be engaged. It was overwhelming. He had never thought it would seem so real. He could taste the breeze sweeping down from the mountains that surrounded the city; smell the flowers from the many gardens and orchards within, and the spices from the bazaars. Hear music on the air, which sounded like a fusion of traditional Arabic and African music mixed with the beat of modern electronic music. Despite his prejudices he had to admit that it sounded sublime.